Knowing your word count is often a requirement, not a curiosity: the minimum on an essay, the maximum on an article, the character limit on a meta description, whether a post fits a tweet. Counting by eye is impossible and by hand error-prone. This tool analyses your text instantly — words, characters and sentences.
Paste your text and the word count, character counts (with and without spaces) and sentence count appear at once.
How is it calculated?
What's counted
- Words: units separated by spaces, line breaks or punctuation. Consecutive spaces count as one separator.
- Characters (with spaces): every letter, number, punctuation mark and space.
- Characters (without spaces): excluding spaces — the basis for most character limits (Twitter, meta descriptions).
- Sentences: units ending in a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark.
Where it helps
- Academic: hitting the word limit on an essay, article or abstract.
- SEO: meta title (~60 characters) and description (~155 characters) limits; content length.
- Social media: tweet (280 characters), message and ad-copy limits.
- Translation/editing: per-word pricing, page estimates (a page ≈ 250–300 words).
- Exams: meeting a required word range in an essay.
Word count and reading time
You can roughly estimate reading time from the word count: an average reader manages ~200–250 words per minute, so a 1,000-word piece takes about 4–5 minutes to read. Speaking is slower (~130 words per minute), so word count is a good guide when timing a speech or presentation.
A note
Counting rules can vary slightly by language and purpose (hyphenated words, numbers, abbreviations). If you have an official limit, it's worth checking that institution's own counter too.
Worked example
Take the sentence "Today the weather is lovely. I want to go outside!" — it has 10 words, two sentences (one ending in a full stop, one in an exclamation mark), and 51 characters including spaces. This tool is handy when writing a meta description: because Google truncates it after roughly 155 characters, you can paste your text and keep the with-spaces character count under 155. For an essay requiring "at least 250 words", paste your draft and see instantly whether you've crossed the line.
FAQ
How is the word count calculated?+
Units separated by spaces and punctuation are counted; consecutive spaces count as one separator. Just paste your text and the tool returns words, characters and sentences instantly.
What is the difference between character counts with and without spaces?+
The with-spaces count includes every character; the without-spaces count excludes spaces. Limits like Twitter and meta descriptions usually count with spaces.
How many words is a page?+
About 250–300 words in a standard font and spacing. It's the rough measure used for translation and editing pricing and for estimating document length.
How long should a meta description be?+
Google truncates after roughly 155–160 characters. Paste your text and keep the with-spaces character count under that limit for the best SEO result.
Can I estimate reading time from the word count?+
Roughly yes: average reading speed is ~200–250 words per minute, so a 1,000-word piece takes about 4–5 minutes. Spoken delivery drops to ~130 words per minute.
Will the count be the same everywhere?+
There can be small differences — hyphenated words, numbers and abbreviations may be counted differently across tools. For an official limit, check that institution's own counter too.